If there is one place in the Obama White House where the 2008 campaign was more than just a memory it has been the West Wing press shop, where the combative, don’t-give-an-inch approach more typical of hard-fought political campaigns has lived on among a tight-knit group of loyal communications aides.

In naming Jay Carney as the new White House press secretary, President Barack Obama not only passed over a stable of these veterans for someone who didn’t work in the campaign, he chose someone who covered it.

For the Obama White House, which sometimes seems to view reporters with about the same level of distrust as their predecessors in the Bush administration, it was a radical departure. And to some analysts, the selection of Carney, a former Time reporter who has served for the past two years as Vice President Joe Biden’s director of communications, was an indication Obama and new White House chief of staff Bill Daley were intent on signaling a break with campaign-style tactics in favor of a more buttoned-down focus on the business of governing, and possibly a détente with the White House press corps.

“The process of explaining issues is so different when you’re in government than when you’re campaigning. You need people who have a sense of that,” said Martha Kumar, a Towson University professor who studies White House operations and presidential personnel decisions. “We’re at a period where governing is crucial and they felt they had not been as successful as the president would like, in fact he’s said that, as far as communications went….He wants to have people who can explain policy better and that means a change in approach.”

Until the last few weeks, Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton was widely-expected to get the promotion. Burton was Obama’s national press secretary during his presidential bid and has regularly subbed for outgoing press secretary Robert Gibbs at briefings.

Burton was the favorite choice among many in the press shop who toiled with him in the Chicago headquarters during the 2008 campaign. Even before the decision was made, some White House staffers expressed discomfort with the public debate and deliberation about a job that many considered Burton well-qualified for and deserving of.

“Bill didn’t deserve this,” one admirer told POLITICO last week. “He could have done this job.”

Burton was also a favorite of many reporters in the briefing room – who appreciated his more casual style and generally less contentious manner than the departing press secretary, Robert Gibbs.

Another candidate in the mix, deputy press secretary Josh Earnest, was Obama’s Iowa communications director and then the deputy communications chief at campaign headquarters. A regular spokeswoman for the campaign who now serves as deputy communications director, Jen Psaki, was also interviewed for the job Carney won Thursday.

The choice of Carney represents a compromise of sorts. With his two years at Biden’s side, he’s not a complete White House outsider picked directly from the existing press corps or cable TV gabfests. At the same time, he’s done serious reporting for Time and taken part in the past in the back-and-forth of TV talk.

“There’s been some problems with Gibbs in that he hasn’t done that well with the Washington press corps,” said Stephen Hess, a Brookings Institution scholar and veteran of several White Houses. “Carney has paid his dues as a Washington reporter and he has some experience now as a White House spokesperson…..It’s time for a change in that operation and an ‘inside outsider,’ which is what he is, is as much of a change as these folks want.”

Daley may have raised expectations for an even greater departure for the largely male communications team by floating a desire to name a woman to the press secretary’s post and then not doing so. Some sources said incoming adviser David Plouffe and Obama himself were also eager to put a new face on the administration, perhaps a female one. However, communications aide Stephanie Cutter took herself out of the running. Other women interviewed, including former Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Karen Finney, did not get the nod.

But the announcement of appointments of women to other top slots Thursday—Alyssa Mastromoncao and Nancy-Ann Min DeParle as deputy chiefs of staff and Cutter as deputy senior adviser—should help mute any gender-based backlash.

Whether Carney’s ascent will necessarily mean a less contentious way of doing business for the White House press staff is less clear. During his two years as a spokesman for Biden, Carney established a reputation for being feisty and blunt with journalists whose work irritated the administration. Some saw him as a newcomer trying to prove his bona fides to the campaign clique.

Whatever the advantages that Carney brings, it is unlikely he will ever enjoy the influence with Obama enjoyed by Gibbs, who delved into polling and politics at White House meetings, making broad arguments traditionally beyond the remit of most press secretaries. Gibbs did so much advising that reporters sometimes complained that he was neglecting his main job of responding to queries from the press.

There were early indications Thursday that Carney’s authority might be more limited than Gibbs’s was. As part of a realignment of the White House organizational chart, the press shop is expected to be subsumed into the communications operation. As a result, Carney is expected to answer to White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer—a reporting chain that Gibbs didn’t have to deal with.

Hess said Carney is well suited for the job in part because the job now isn’t the same one Gibbs had to do for the past two years. The next spokesman will handle hardball politics more rarely, because staffers are already moving to Chicago to set up the re-election campaign. “They’re going out to do the campaign stuff. He’s here to do the governance stuff,” Hess said.

“At this point in a presidency, the president’s interest is in success, not in how well he personally knows somebody,” Kumar added. “He wants someone who knows the White House, the media world and the world of Washington….I think [Carney] will be regarded as a pro.”